Summer Beer Festival

This was the weekend of Colchester Summer Beer Festival 2011 – but more on that story in a moment! Just a quick round-up of the weekend’s events.

On Friday night, as there was no 21, we had AJ and Jen round for dinner. As always it was a pleasure to see them both, we showed them some ‘Yes Prime Minister’ which AJ really enjoyed. Whenever we watch it I’m always amazed at just how topical it is!

On Saturday we did a bit of shopping in the morning. I went looking for a new watch as my old one broke recently, unfortunately I couldn’t find one which was somewhere between ‘cheap and nasty’ and ‘expensive and designer’. I couldn’t believe how many watches seem to have plastic straps which feel like they won’t last (Swatch, I’m looking at you).

Anyway. In the afternoon we headed down to Colchester Arts Centre for the beer festival. After a while we were joined by Dan, Alison, Alex, Tom, Clif, and a couple of other friends / relatives of the aforementioned people. It was a great afternoon – beautiful sunny weather, just perfect for sitting out in the graveyard drinking and chatting with friends! Alex wanted me to try and 11% Belgian beer, although I think after having had a few drinks already that would probably have not been a great idea! After that we went to the Ashiana for a curry, which was up to their usual high standards. Then we went back to Tom’s place for a bit and played random games involving chocolate chilli Russian roulette (the hot chilli was very hot…) and then just listening to random YouTube music for a while.

So that was a very pleasant way to spend the afternoon / evening! On Sunday we went to church in the morning, which was a confirmation service. It was two hours long, which is very long for a morning service, but it was really encouraging to see nine young people getting baptised / confirmed (three of them were being baptised). Next Sunday we are having a believer’s baptism service in the afternoon which I’m sure will also be encouraging.

Anyway, after the morning service we just about had time to come back home for lunch and chill for a bit (mainly by catching up with Doctor Who – it was great but I need to go back and watch the whole series again!), before heading out again to Sunday@6. We gave George (as in Phil and George) a lift there and back and I think she enjoyed the service as well. So… there you have it. A summary of the weekend.

Oh, I mentioned this on Twitter yesterday but I will expand a little bit here too: yesterday afternoon I listened to an MP3 from the Sovereign Grace Story (it’s free – if you contact me I’ll sort you out with a link; haven’t got the link at work) called “From Notes to Chord Charts: Where are the notes?” It was a seminar on playing music in a worship context, particularly playing from chord charts rather than playing from sheet music. As a “classically trained” pianist – someone who isn’t used to playing from chord charts, not on piano anyway – this was really useful. I gave it a go after listening, and I think I started to get the hang of it. It’s definitely something I want to do more of in the future anyway.


Comments

2 responses to “Summer Beer Festival”

  1. Tsk, chord charts…

  2. What’s wrong with chord charts Simon? I think in a ‘worship’ context using chord charts gives you a lot more scope than sheet music. Most Christian sheet music is pretty bland and uninspiring, you can do an awful lot more with improvising around the chords. And it takes a lot more musical skill / knowledge too, from what I’ve seen so far.

    I’m not saying I’m going to quit playing from sheet music, or going to start playing classical music with chords, but in that particular context I think it makes sense 🙂

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